The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 eBook

To lay a little more load on it, a circumstance has
happen’d, cujus pars magna fui, and which
at another crisis I should have more rejoiced in.
I am about to lose my old and only walk-companion,
whose mirthful spirits were the “youth of our
house,” Emma Isola. I have her here now
for a little while, but she is too nervous properly
to be under such a roof, so she will make short visits,
be no more an inmate. With my perfect approval,
and more than concurrence, she is to be wedded to
Moxon at the end of Aug’st. So “perish
the roses and the flowers”—­how is
it?

Now to the brighter side, I am emancipated from most
hated and detestable people, the Westwoods.
I am with attentive people, and younger—­I
am 3 or 4 miles nearer the Great City, Coaches half-price
less, and going always, of which I will avail myself.
I have few friends left there, one or two tho’
most beloved. But London Streets and faces cheer
me inexpressibly, tho’ of the latter not one
known one were remaining.

Thank you for your cordial reception of Elia.
Inter nos the Ariadne is not a darling with me, several
incongruous things are in it, but in the composition
it served me as illustrative

I want you in the popular fallacies to like the “Home
that is no home” and “rising with the
lark.”

I am feeble, but chearful in this my genial hot weather,—­walk’d
16 miles yesterd’y. I can’t read
much in Summer time. With very kindest love to
all and prayers for dear Dorothy,

I remain

most attachedly yours

C. LAMB.

at mr. walden’s, church street, edmonton,
middlesex.

Moxon has introduced Emma to Rogers, and he smiles
upon the project. I have given E. my MILTON—­will
you pardon me?—­in part of a portion.
It hangs famously in his Murray-like shop.

[On the wrapper is written:—­]

D’r M[oxon], inclose this in a better-looking
paper, and get it frank’d, and good by’e
till Sund’y. Come early—­

C.L.

["The Ariadne.” See the essay on “Barrenness
of the Imaginative Faculty,” where Titian’s
“Bacchus and Ariadne” in the National Gallery
is highly praised (see Vol. II.). Wordsworth’s
favourite essays in this volume were “The Wedding”
and “Old China.”

“My Milton.” Against the reference
to the portrait of Milton, in the postscript, some
one, possibly Wordsworth, has pencilled a note, now
only partially legible. It runs thus: “It
had been proposed by L. that W.W. should be the Possessor
of [? this picture] his friend and that afterwards
it was to be bequeathed to Christ’s Coll.
Cambridge.”

Lamb had given Wordsworth in 1820 a copy of Paradise
Regained, 1671, with this inscription: “C.
Lamb to the best Knower of Milton, and therefore the
worthiest occupant of this pleasant Edition. June
2’d 1820.”]